Kaduna – A phone thief fatally stabbed a Naval officer in Kaduna over the weekend while the officer was fixing a flat tyre near the pedestrian bridge in Kawo, Kaduna North Local Government Area.
The officer, a senior course participant at the Armed Forces Command and Staff College (AFCSC), Jaji, had stopped at a bus stop near the bridge on his way back to Jaji when the attacker confronted him.
Eyewitnesses reported that the assailant demanded the officer’s mobile phone. When the officer refused, the thief stabbed him in the chest with a locally made knife.
Bystanders rushed the officer to a nearby hospital, but doctors declared him dead on arrival. Authorities later moved his body to the mortuary at the 44 Nigerian Army Reference Hospital in Kaduna.
A local vigilante who tried to intervene sustained a stab wound to the hand. However, a crowd quickly subdued the attacker and lynched him at the scene.
“The thief was overpowered by the people and killed instantly,” a witness said.
Military authorities have launched an investigation into the incident, while the Kaduna State Police Command is yet to release an official statement.
